Page 59 of The Elusive Billionaire

For the first time in over a year, getting a child is not my top priority—it’s my beautifully broken pain in the ass Monroe.

Madi stares at her friend with so much heartache that I look away. Braxton smirks at me as though he’s figured out a secret, but I’m unwilling to entertain him. Instead, I focus on the woman in my arms who’s fighting a battle with herself.

Compromise has never come easy to me, but if I don’t offer her something, we may never find a resolution that involves her and me in Happiness long-term.

“Let me in,” I demand in a voice low, soft, and steady, but with enough control that it breaks through her internal battles. “Please. We’re in this together now, regardless of how you feel about that. The only way for both of us and our families to come out of it unscathed is for you to tell me what haunts you so we can blow that shit up together.”

My words seem to snap her back to this reality, and she scrambles from my lap, but I only allow her to slide onto the cushion next to me.

Braxton stands to give her space. He, Madi, and Sage all pull up chairs to face us.

“Please, Sav. Talk to me.” Fear and love battle for dominance in Madi’s tone.

I’ve never even considered compromising for a woman before, and it shocks the hell out of me as I do it now for Savvy by angling my legs toward her and offering a bit of my past. “My father is a piece of shit, Monroe. He took the jewelry emporium that had been in our family for generations and turned it into a bloodbath. He was unethical in his sourcing of diamonds. He cut corners by going into business with known criminals. He killed my sister with his neglect because he was more concerned about appearances and crooked loyalty than he was about his own daughter.

“I’ll never wash the blood from his hands off our family name, and that will always follow me. So don’t tell me that my history has nothing to do with the media frenzy stirred up by my choice to remain elusive over the years.”

Her shoulders tremble. If I could imbue her with my confidence, I’d attach an IV myself.

“I’ve been on display but just far enough out of reach that the public has nothing on me, and now, the first sign of scandal in eighteen years, they blow it up as though we’re royalty. So please tell me how anything you could have possibly done inyour past can even compare to my history. Because from where I’m standing, I’m the one the media is after.”

She shakes her head with a quivering jaw.

Desperation and fear bleed from her eyes, and I feel it deep in my gut. Savvy opens her mouth, but no words come. Whoever has the power to break my woman this way will meet my wrath. I swear it.

It feels like an eternity before she speaks. “My childhood best friend is paralyzed from the waist down…and it’s all my fault.”

The pain that she exudes hits me square in the chest with sniper-like precision, and the list of ways I hate my honesty-challenged angel is instantly wiped away.

Childhood trauma has a way of allowing you to see the most damaged souls, especially when their pain mirrors your own.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

SAVVY

“My childhoodbest friend is paralyzed from the waist down…and it’s all my fault.” Electric shocks straight to the heart would be less painful than what I experience the moment I admit it.

Run.

It might be the first time I’ve ever uttered those words, and now I’m terrified to make eye contact with anyone.

Hide.

I barely survived the hurtful comments and vicious glares from people in Vegas when I was a teenager, and I never cared much about most of them. Receiving the same treatment from people I love will be my undoing.

Protect yourself.

I have to get out of here.

Outwardly, I’m steady and calm as I attempt to stand, but Grey knocks all the air from my lungs when he tugs me back to the sofa next to him. His large fingers remain wrapped around my wrist as if he knows I’m seeking an escape. The soft fabric of his designer pants slides across my fingertips, making the threads of my shirt feel like sandpaper in comparison.

Don’t react. Don’t show weakness. Run.

“You’re not running away. These people love you, Monroe. You will give them the opportunity to be to you who you have always been to them.” His words are harsh, but his soothing tone makes my stomach flip and flop.

“Savvy.” Madi says my name hesitantly, and when I glance up, I’m forced to witness the pain my secrets have already caused. “What do you mean, it’s all your fault?”

Am I seriously considering telling them everything? I can’t do that, right? The control Riley’s family has reaches too far. It makes them dangerous—I know that now. If they’re behind this, then everyone I love could be in harm’s way.